Comfort

I thought it was weird how our 2015 Hyundai Sonata beeped whenever I walked up behind it. Was it a greeting? If so, then why didn't it unlock the doors?

Had I done my homework, I would have realized it was the Sonata's hands-free trunk opening feature, which Mike Monticello has already reported on. I realized this after five amusing minutes in the garage spent approaching the car from various angles trying to replicate the beeping.

This is already a potentially volatile situation. My mom and my girlfriend are in the back of our 2015 Hyundai Sonata, and we're stuck in stop-and-go traffic. The climate control system says 70 degrees and auto. My butt confirms this. Our Sonata does a great job keeping cool, so I don't believe the complaint.

I ask them to check the rear vents. Maybe the louvers have been shut. They can't find any.

"That's ridiculous," I say. I reach behind the center arm rest and feel for the vents.

I like our 2015 Hyundai Sonata. No, it's not the most inspired car, nor the classiest. Not a lot of brand cachet behind that badge and you're definitely not impressing the valet in the Sonata. But as a Monday through Friday car, I could live with the Sonata very nicely. It'll get me to work in comfort and quiet, it lays out all of my techy needs — music, podcasts, phone, navigation — in logical an comprehensive order within the center stack. It's got loads of room the backseat for when I need to ferry the kid, kid-friends, or adult friends.

I can even opt for the turbo "Eco" version if I want a little more sauce. Less horsepower, more sauce, you say? It's true. The Eco model we tested, with its wee 1.6-liter four-cylinder was quicker to 60 mph (7.5 seconds) than our long-termer with its larger engine and additional horsepower (8.2 seconds).

Even the Sonata's audio system is nice.

But there are two things that really hold back the Sonata from asserting itself in this class, both among wonky critics like us and perhaps among shoppers for whom midsize family sedans begin and end at Accord and Camry.

Lompoc, California is a sleepy agricultural enclave about 150 miles north of my home in Los Angeles. It's also more famously home to the state penitentiary where Dominic Toretto served two years for attempted murder.

So there's really no reason to go to Lompoc, but I found one. And I asked our long-term 2015 Hyundai Sonata to get me there.

I might be the first person to think, let alone say out loud, that I was ready to trade the keys to a Dodge Viper for a 2015 Hyundai Sonata.

But after I pulled the Edmunds long-term Viper into my driveway after a Labor Day weekend mini road trip, after I'd stretched a leg to clear the baking, expansive door sill and warned my daughter and road-trip companion to do the same for the 16th or 19th time, and after unfolding my frame from the tiny cabin and doing 10 jumping jacks alongside the car, I said to my kid "Wow. That was fun. Now I'm ready for a normal car."

After more than 700 miles behind the wheel of our 2015 Hyundai Sonata this past weekend, I'm sold on its road trip capabilities. Here's why.

It has great seats. This is surprising since they don't boast much of a pedigree. They're not heavily bolstered or infinitely adjustable. They're not air-cooled or even covered in leather. But after several multi-hour stints behind the wheel, I rarely got uncomfortable. No squirming around to keep my rear end awake or any noticeable lack of lumbar support. I hardly noticed them at all which is good.

For the July 4th weekend, I drove my family (wife, two small children) to my in-law's house. Compared to the antics of, say, Vacation (either the classic old one or new one), my trip was wholly uneventful. But an uneventful 700 miles with two little kids is just fine by me.

The Los Angeles metro area typically ranks as having the worst traffic in the United States. So that's our starting base. Now add in a big roadside brush fire right at the exact point where two big freeway arteries meet and effectively serve as the only way, once you've committed, to drive in or out of Los Angeles from the north. This fire blocks lanes and causes every motorist to be a looky-loo. Now try to drive through all this at 4 p.m. like I did recently. Fun!

Thankfully, I happened to be driving our 2015 Hyundai Sonata. There's not much else in our long-term fleet right now that can match the Sonata for providing long-duration comfort and serenity.

Previously, I installed my daughter's rear-facing convertible car seat in the rear center position of our 2015 Hyundai Sonata. It worked out OK, but I had to use the seatbelt to install the seat rather than the LATCH connectors, and my extra-wide First Years True Fit C680 SI car seat blocked use of the rear passenger-side seatbelt.

This time I felt lazy and just wanted to use LATCH, so I put the seat in the rear passenger-side position. Surprisingly, there was still plenty of legroom for a 5'10 tall passenger to ride up front.

I'm beginning to get attached to our long-term 2015 Hyundai Sonata, and I certainly didn't expect that. As I circled through our company parking garage last week, I realized I was looking forward to my afternoon commute in the Sonata.

As I've previously written and as Scott Oldham has said, the Hyundai engineers did a nice job with the steering in this car. There's a precision that you notice as soon you turn the steering wheel (which, by the way, feels like it has a smaller diameter than the previous-generation Sonata's wheel), and that whets my appetite for the rest of the drive.

Some cars are just overrated. That's how I always felt about the previous generation Hyundai Sonata, which debuted in 2011. It was okay. Maybe even good. But great? Revolutionary? Special? Not really.

I didn't even think it was particularly attractive. There were better cars in its class, including the Kia Optima (which shared many of its components), the Honda Accord, the Mazda 6, the Ford Fusion and others. We had a long-term 2011 Sonata in our test fleet, which we drove about 20,000 miles. It was reliable transportation and others on our staff became quite enamored with it. I didn't.

Instead, I sat back in amazement as the Sonata was bestowed with praise and sales success. For five years it felt like every auto writer loved it and every midsize sedan buyer wanted one. Which brings me to our long-term 2015 Hyundai Sonata. This is an inspired car.

If you're a long-time reader of our long-term road tests, you might remember that we used to have a 2011 Hyundai Sonata GLS in our fleet. I liked the idea of that car, which offered lots of space and lots of features in an attractive wrapper, but the actual execution left me cold. Fortunately, a few of my complaints have been addressed in the 2015 Hyundai Sonata.

If you only have one child and you don't have a bad back (that would be aggravated by repeated stooping), it's easy to make a case for buying a midsize sedan like our 2015 Hyundai Sonata. There's so much room to spare in here, even compared to most small crossover SUVs and the rare compact minivan like my Mazda 5.

Given all the room in the Sonata, I chose to install my kid's larger-than-average convertible car seat in the rear center position. Hyundai gives you a LATCH setup only in the rear outboard positions, but as usual, I was tempted to use the inboard lower anchors for a center installation. Fortunately, Hyundai lays out what is and isn't OK very clearly in the Sonata's owner's manual.

I'm not going to lie to you. When I realized our 2015 Hyundai Sonata was not the Eco model, I was a little bit bummed. "We got the wrong car," I thought to myself.

The reason I thought this was because we had a short-term Sonata Eco test car in here a little while ago and it actually outperformed the more powerful 2.0T Sonata (which has an extra 68 horsepower over the Eco!) in a straight line, the Eco hitting 60 mph in 7.5 seconds, the 2.0T in 8.3. That surprised us, but then the Eco is the only Sonata with the new quick-shifting dual-clutch seven-speed transmission, and that 1.6 turbo is a lively little piece.

I used our long-term 2015 Hyundai Sonata Sport for a quick weekend trip to Morro Bay. This small California village is best known for Morro Rock, a nearly 600-foot-high volcanic plug. At least, that's what Wikipedia says it is.

To me, it's a giant rock with a small tourist trap disguised as a fishing village nearby. But it's a neat little town to visit, with some great restaurants and hotels and fun things to see and do. And this time of year it's not too crowded, and it was even blissfully chilly (into the 40s at night).

Our long-term Sonata Sport with its 185-horsepower 2.4-liter four-cylinder did well on the trip. This naturally aspirated engine isn't brimming with power, but it does okay in most situations.